Quick Router Table Stand

So, I have to cut 16 mortises, 3/16″ wide by 3/4″ long by 1/2″ deep in the 3/4″ square stiles for the Blacker House style sconce I’m making. I did a few experiments with chopping these by hand and it’s too slow and fussy for my current skills. I need to practice more, but I also want to get this light made. So I decided to set up a simple router table to crank these mortises out.

Step one, I started scrounging on craigslist for a ready-to-go router table. I don’t want (or need) another project. I found a few for sale including a nice Jessem setup, but they were all way more money than I wanted to spend on something like this. Several folks were selling the typical particle board and Formica tops with the plastic insert on 2×4 legs – for hundreds of dollars. Not my cup of tea. I was on the verge of making one from scratch when I found a guy selling a Bosch 1617 router and a steel Bench Dog table top. This is a steel top that it meant to attach to the left side of a standard table saw. It won’t work with my saw, but a router right there would be in the way after all (which is why this one was for sale).

I started with a simple sketch.

Long, Drawn Out Design Phase

I thought about making a cabinet base out of plywood, with drawers for bit storage and so forth. But I also wanted to just get this done and operational so I could get on with my sconce project So I decided on a fabricated steel stand. I had some 2″ square tube on hand, so I cut app the pieces and de-burred it.

Steel All Cut To Length

Then went at it with the welder. I tack welded all the parts and triple checked to make sure they were square. The heat from welding will easily pull parts out of alignment, and in a few cases I chose where the next weld went to pull parts back into alignment.

Tack Welding

I took about an hour and a half to cut the tubing and weld up the stand. I don’t think I could have made this in wood any faster.

Stand Completed

I added two tabs to the back to bolt the steel top in place using two of the existing holes for mounting it to a table saw. The top is completely support by the steel tubing, the tabs just provide the attachmant to keep it in place.

Mounting Tabs

In place in the wood shop. I made some practice cuts and the mortises are prefect. Time to do the real parts now. It’s simple and even with the steel base and top I can easily pick this up and move it around the shop. I made it the same height as the table saw, so I can press it into service as an out feed support if necessary, although I plan to make a dedicated support soonish. I need some way to store the extra router bits and wrenches, but I’ll deal with that another day. I’ll need to add dust collection for this eventually.

So far it seems plenty stable and solid. I wouldn’t expect any vibration problems, loads of commercial router tables have steel bases (Kreg, Jessem). It probably weight 75 or 80 pounds. Where I see a potential problem is if I was wanted to run a giant part through it, it might be too light to stay in place. If that happens I’ll have my teenager stand on the base 🙂